Thursday, in suburban Miami-Dade County, a team of researchers cranked up two 500-horsepower engines attached to fans and aimed them at a condemned house. The damage seemed obvious, but researchers said it is necessary to test how buildings will survive under hurricane conditions - and make necessary adjustments to materials.

"Everything in the past has been done with wind tunnels," said Stephen Leatherman, the director of the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University. If the name sounds familiar, that's because Leatherman is also known as "Dr. Beach," the guy who annually rates sandy vacation spots nationwide. "This is a holistic testing of a structure."

Leatherman's contraption - dubbed "the Wall of Wind" - looks like a giant airboat, albeit one with two fans and a giant sprinkler system. The $1-million machine replicates Category 3 winds up to 120 mph. He is building a second one with six fans and hopes to someday build one with 18 fans that will mimic a Category 5 with 160 mph winds and be housed at the hurricane research center in Sweetwater.

Meanwhile, Leatherman and his researchers will assess the damage to the concrete block house that took the brunt of the manufactured winds Thursday. He expects to discover small tweaks to building materials that will mean the difference between, say, a few missing shingles and catastrophic water damage.

One thing was immediately clear, said Leatherman: Don't bother taping windows with masking tape or any other kind of sticky-backed material. The tape was the first thing to go.